Reflection on 9/11

I had every intention of watching Bush’s nonpolitical 9/11 speech tonight. Really I did. But I just could not bring myself to do it; not today. I have been trying to figure out what to say, if anything, about the world we live in five years hence. I knew no one that died in that day’s events. I always feel that commenting on 9/11 in any sort of personal way for those of us fortunate enough to not be directly affected by it demeans the loses of those that did. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the victims, survivors, and heroes of 9/11 own this day and the grief that it brought them. I was a simple bystander hundreds of miles away. In that spirit, I want to recount what I saw and felt and how I see things now.

I pulled up a news site that morning and saw that a plane had hit the WTC. I immediately went to my co-worker J.’s office who had a TV. And I just sat in a co-workers office, watching the first tower burning on the television. I remember thinking that there is no fucking way that this is happening. This had to be some kind of terrible accident. Then the second tower was hit. And then they fell. I sometimes feel like this nation has not stopped shaking since. I left J.’s office and tried to process what I had just seen. I sat outside smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, trying to purge from my mind the images of people I had seen jumping from the flaming towers.

I remember that the President was nowhere to be found.

Bush delivered an address later that night that I still recall as bumbling and inept – deer in the headlights stuff. Our President did not take up the leadership mantle until days later when he grabbed a bullhorn and spoke from atop a pile of rubble; an image he has traded on since. Bush has since manipulated that tragedy to push his agenda, has fanned our fear and used it as a wedge. He has squandered the goodwill and empathy of other nations following 9/11 by employing a bullying, disastrous foreign policy, trashing the Constitution, and telling those that opposed his policies that we were aiding and abetting the terrorists.

So I made a decision to ignore his remarks tonight. As far as I am concerned, he lacks the authority to speak about this day. He abdicated that right when he sat in that classroom as we were under attack. He abdicated that right when he “cut and ran” to Nebraska aboard Air Force One while New York, the Pentagon, and a field in PA burned. And he abdicated that right when he pulled troops from Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq.

This is not a day for the President to attempt an image rehab. This day was and is for the victims, their families, and the people that tried to save them. God bless them all.